''Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English'' (''LGSWE'') is a

descriptive grammar In the study of language, description or descriptive linguistics is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used in the past) by a speech community. François & Ponsonnet (2013). All acad ...

of English written by

Douglas Biber Douglas may refer to: People * Douglas (given name) * Douglas (surname) Animals *Douglas (parrot), macaw that starred as the parrot ''Rosalinda'' in Pippi Longstocking *Douglas the camel, a camel in the Confederate Army in the American Civil W ...

, Stig Johansson,

Geoffrey Leech Geoffrey Neil Leech FBA (16 January 1936 – 19 August 2014) was a specialist in English language and linguistics. He was the author, co-author, or editor of over 30 books and over 120 published papers. His main academic interests were English ...

, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan, first published by

Longman Longman, also known as Pearson Longman, is a publishing company founded in London, England, in 1724 and is owned by Pearson PLC. Since 1968, Longman has been used primarily as an imprint by Pearson's Schools business. The Longman brand is also ...

in 1999. It is an authoritative description of modern English, a successor to ''

A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language ''A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language'' is a descriptive grammar of English written by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. It was first published by Longman in 1985. In 1991 it was called "The greates ...

'' (ComGEL) published in 1985 and a predecessor of the ''

Cambridge Grammar of the English Language ''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (''CGEL'') is a descriptive grammar of the English language. Its primary authors are Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum. Huddleston was the only author to work on every chapter. It was publi ...

'' (CamGEL) published in 2002. The authors and some reviewers consider it a complement rather than a replacement of the former since it follows – with few exceptions (for example in the typology of adverbials) – the grammatical framework and concepts from ComGEL, which is also corroborated by the fact that one of LGSWE's authors,

, is also a co-author of ComGEL. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English represents a large-scale corpus-based grammar focussing in its grammatical description of English mainly on "functional interpretation of the quantitative findings" (p. 41). These interpretations and findings are presented consistently throughout the book, with an emphasis on four major registers (functional styles), ''conversation'', ''fiction'', ''news'', and ''academic prose'', occasionally supplemented by examples from two supplementary registers: ''general prose'' (non-fiction) and ''non-conversational speech'' (e.g. lectures, sermons). Covering both British and American varieties of English in all of these registers but the last one, the descriptions in LGSWE are based on a language corpus exceeding 40 million words and as such this grammar has been widely praised as a new milestone in corpus-based grammatical studies.McEnery, T., Xiao, R. and Tono, Y.: ''Corpus-based Language Studies: An Advanced Resource Book'', Oxon/New York: Routledge, 2006, p. 85. While targeting "English language students and researchers" (p. 45), an abridged version of the grammar was released in 2002, ''Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English'', together with a workbook entitled ''Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English Workbook'', to be used by students on university and teacher-training courses.

Reviews

* Görlach, M.: "Review of D. Biber, S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad and E. Finegan, Longman grammar of spoken and written English (Harlow: Pearson Education, 1999)", ''Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik'' 25/2, 2000, pp. 257–260. * Hirst, G.: "Review of 'The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English'", ''Computational Linguistics'' 27/1, 2001, pp. 132–13

* Krug, M.: "Douglas Biber, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan, Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman, 1999. Hardback 9p. xii + 1,204. .", English Language and Linguistics''Volume 6/2, pp. 379–41

* Mukherjee, J.: "Corpus linguistics and English reference grammars" in A. Renouf (Ed.): ''The Changing Face of Corpus Linguistics: Papers from the 24th International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora (ICAME 24)", Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 337–35

* Parker, F.: "Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. By Douglas Biber, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan. Essex, England: Pearson Education Ltd., 1999. xxviii + 1204. ", ''Journal of English Linguistics'' 31/1, pp. 90–9

* Schmid, H.-J.: "Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English: Review of Douglas Biber, Stig Johannson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, 1999. xxviii+1204 pages", ''Journal of Pragmatics'' 35/8, 2003, pp. 1265–126

* Schneider, E. W.: "Review of "Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English" by Douglas Biber, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan", ''English World-Wide'' 22/1, 2001, pp. 137–14

* Williams, H. "Review. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. D Biber, S Johansson, G Leech, S Conrad, E Finegan", ''ELT Journal'' 55/2, 2001, pp. 208–21

Notes

References

* D. Biber, S. Johansson, G. Leech, S. Conrad and E. Finegan: ''Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English'', Harlow: Pearson Education, 1999. * D. Biber, S. Conrad, G. Leech: ''Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English'', Harlow: Pearson Education, 2002 (). * S. Conrad, D. Biber, G. Leech: ''Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English Workbook'', Harlow: Pearson Education, 2002 (978-0582539426). {{DEFAULTSORT:Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English 1999 non-fiction books English grammar books Corpus linguistics

Reviews

See also

Notes

References